Jonny Humphries
Reporting from the Liverpool

The inquiry had previously been told Jonathan Hayes had tried to grab the knife from the perpetrator, AR, as he’s being referred to the in the inquiry, but was stabbed in the leg.

His colleagues pulled him back inside their office and closed the door on the attacker.

Hayes had a "very serious" injury, Nicholas Moss KC says, and his colleagues applied a tourniquet to the wound.

Moss then asks detective chief inspector Jason Pye from Merseyside Police: "At the time of Mr Hayes' intervention, there remained the potential for AR to cause even further injuries than he'd already inflicted, because Child X and Heidi were still inside the toilet cubicle?"

The detective replies: "Yes that's right".

Jonny Humphries
Reporting from Liverpool

Moss then moves on to the events around the stabbing of Jonathan Hayes, who worked in an office across the landing from the studio.

He says a colleague of Hayes’, Joseph Manning, heard children screaming outside, but didn’t think that was unusual.

Manning walked onto the landing, and noticed blood on the wall, although the door to the studio was shut and no-one was visible.

He told his colleagues, who looked out of the office window and saw a girl on the ground outside in the carpark, who Pye says must have been Child C1.

One of those colleagues, Jonathan Cape, then called an ambulance.

Jonathan Hayes then got up from his desk and walked out onto the landing between their office and the dance studio.

Immediately, Manning heard Hayes "shouting loudly for help".

The inquiry moves on to after Rudakubana was arrested for a moment.

Nicholas Moss KC says that police officers asked one of the nearby window cleaners to take the body of Bebe King away to try and get her help.

Another officer then found one of the class teachers, Heidi Liddle, hiding in a toilet cubicle.

Jonny Humphries
Reporting from Liverpool

DCI Jason Pye confirms Lucas was able to connect with a 999 operator “very shortly” after she got out of the door, and she was able to get across the fact there was “multiple stabbings” by “one boy” and gave the address of the building.

Lucas also flagged down two window cleaners who were near the car park, the inquiry hears.

Nicholas Moss KC then moves on to Child C1, who could be seen trying to escape the building before being pulled back inside by the killer.

Child C1 was able to flee again before collapsing nearby and was picked up by a member of staff from Master’s Auto Repair about two minutes later.

Jonny Humphries
Reporting from Liverpool

Following a short break, the inquiry resumes with Moss asking about footage showing the children fleeing the dance studio.

DCI Jason Pye confirms by 11:46 BST, a total of nine girls had escaped the building, with CCTV showing Leanne Lucas in the doorway, who had been repeatedly stabbed by this time.

Moss says as Lucas stopped at the doorway “it was clear she could be seen ushering three children out of the door who perhaps would otherwise have been behind her.”

After Lucas began running across the car park with her phone to her ear, 10 more girls fled in about five seconds.

Alice Aguiar was the seventh of the girls in that group and subsequently collapsed by a white BMW car and later died of her injuries.

At that stage Elsie Dot Stancombe and Bebe King had been killed. Child X, who was sheltering in a toilet cubicle with Heidi Liddle, and child C1 were still inside the building.

Jonny Humphries
Reporting from Liverpool

Moments after Rudakubana got out of the taxi and entered the dance studio the “sounds of distress” could be heard, Nicholas Moss KC says.

He will now cover how the attack happened in general terms to avoid repeating unnecessarily distressing details.

DCI Pye confirms it as not possible to “determine with any precision” the way the attack unfolded inside, and that there was no CCTV coverage inside the building.

Moss says the inquiry is “moving on to a sensitive area” and asks Pye to confirm the attack “started very suddenly” and was “wholly unexpected.”

Pye also confirms that the investigation did not take witness accounts from the children inside the dance studio to avoid traumatising them further, and the class teachers Leanne Lucas and Heidi Liddle had provided witness accounts.

Pye also says that in "traumatic cases" witness evidence can be unreliable in terms of precise timings.

A short break is now called.

Jonny Humphries
Reporting from Liverpool

Nicholas Moss KC has been asking DCI Jason Pye to confirm some timings of the attack and talking through a plan of the Hart Space building.

The inquiry then heard on the morning of the dance class, the 26 girls who attended were split into two groups, one led by organiser Leanne Lucas and the other by assistant teacher Heidi Liddle.

They did yoga and dance in the separate groups. The yoga studio was downstairs, but by the time the attacker arrived at the scene, the yoga sessions had finished and all the girls were in the dance studio upstairs.

Pye says that according to dashcam footage and the evidence of taxi driver Gary Poland, the killer was silent on the journey from his home to the dance studio in Southport.

When he arrived, however, AR asked the driver: “Is this 34a Hart Street?”.

Poland then inadvertently pointed the killer in the wrong direction, towards Masters Auto Repairs to the left of the Hart Space dance studio.

Poland began asking AR how he was paying and followed on in his car. At the garage, three witnesses, Jamie Dixon and Colin Parry who worked there and customer John Phillips, told him to pay his fare.

Moss asks: “What was AR’s response?

Pye replies: “What are you going to do about it?”

Jonny Humphries
Reporting from Liverpool

Moss shows the inquiry a map showing the killer’s home address in Banks, West Lancashire, along with other locations of interest.

Det Ch Insp Pye says the inquiry team were able to confirm with confidence where he went on that morning due to CCTV and doorbell camera footage.

Nicholas Moss KC says the killer’s parent later told police they believed he left the house to go for a walk.

At 11:14 BST, Rudakubana rang a taxi company, which used an automated system.

The system recognised his number and answered using the name Simon, suggesting he had used that name when booking a taxi before.

DCI Pye says he believes the killer left his house and walked a short distance to book the taxi to avoid his parents seeing him.

However the automated system ordered it to his home address, so he walked back to get into the taxi.

Moss asks: “Did your investigation establish how and where the killer had hidden the knife upon his person?”

The detective refers back to his statement and says: “Gary Poland [the taxi driver who drove AR to the scene] says that as he walks away from the taxi, he’s walking as is if he appeared to be doing something to his arm with hoodie, he wasn’t swinging his arm.”

Pye says that dashcam footage showed the killer’s hands as he left the vehicle, which were empty, but a large pocket at the front of his green hoodie appeared to have an item “swinging” in it.

However, he adds that due to how baggy the hoodie was, the investigation team could not be certain that’s where he was hiding the knife.

Jonny Humphries
Reporting from Liverpool

Nicholas Moss KC asks about the killer’s use of the internet on the morning of the attack.

Det Ch Insp Pye replies that he deleted his internet search history from before 11:00 BST that morning.

Some data was recovered from Google and Microsoft, which only came after he was sentenced, but Pye says this was of little evidentiary value.

The inquiry had heard the attacker searched for footage of the stabbing of Bishop Mar Mari Emmanual in Australia. He had searched for a specific time alongside the name of the bishop the inquiry heard.

Pye says: “We believe that he was looking for a time within a podcast. We tried to repeat the same search that he had.

“It navigated us to a number of documents within a tab you could click on, there’s a video, a live stream of a bishop and it actually shows the stabbing. We could see it on the search, but we could not say for certainty that he had watched that.”

Moss then asks about a phone recovered from the scene of the attack.

Det Ch Insp Pye confirms the attacker had saved the precise address of the attack, 34a Hart Street, as a contact on that phone.

He had also saved a contact for One Taxi; the firm he used to book a taxi to travel to the scene.

Moss asks Pye to confirm the postcode for the building had been saved as a contact and asks the detective to summarise what conclusions he drew from that.

Det Ch Insp Pye replies: “That having seen the advert, he saved those so he could remember where it was he needed to go on the day.”

Erica Witherington
Reporting from the inquiry

Beyond the long tables of lawyers, grey screens partition off an area of behind which families of the victims can sit, unseen.

From there, they have a direct view of counsel to the inquiry, Nicholas Moss KC questioning DCI Pye.

Inquiry chair, Sir Adrian Fulford sits at the centre of a raised platform, following the documents and images being brought up on his screen.

He is listening intently to the detective’s replies.

Jonny Humphries
Reporting from Liverpool

Moss asks detective chief inspector Jason Pye about Axel Rudakubana’s use of Instagram on a tablet recovered from his house, in relation to the question of how he knew about the Taylor Swift themed dance class where the attack happened.

The inquiry has heard the event was advertised by its organisers, Leanne Lucas and Heidi Liddle, on Instagram.

Pye says the data on the devices did not include a history of what the killer had viewed on the social media site, although the Instagram application was installed on one of them.

“That would have required what we call an international letter of request at the time. We never did that because we knew that it had been advertised on Instagram,” he says.

“We knew that he knew the location, and therefore must have seen the advert, but we couldn’t find any evidence on the devices…

“He knew where he wanted to go, and it was obvious when he got there.”

Det Ch Insp Pye confirms that the investigation team were able to get access to two Lenovo tablets, but that the data of interest was stored online.

The advert is displayed on the court screens.

Jonny Humphries
Reporting from Liverpool

Counsel to the inquiry, Nicholas Moss KC, has called Det Ch Insp Jason Pye of Merseyside Police to give evidence.

The officer sits in the witness box, and after some technical issues he is ready to begin.

Mr Moss will refer the detective to various images, exhibits and statements displayed on screens in the inquiry room.

He asks Det Ch Insp Pye to confirm that various witness statements are correct and accurate.

Mr Moss asks him to explain the role of a senior investigating officer in any specific investigation.

He replies: “To oversee the strategic, the planning the guidance of the investigation and to have overall responsibility for the decisions made along the way.”

Erica Witherington
Reporting from the inquiry

This morning, the inquiry has moved into the main ballroom - the largest room here at the18th century town hall.

Lawyers are assembling now at long tables under three original, 28ft0-high Georgian chandeliers.

Columns topped with gold-painted plasterwork surround the walls, and between them are paintings of city dignitaries of the past.

This room is felt to be brighter and less formal than the civil chamber at the bottom of the building, where the inquiry opened. It will now see its work through to completion in here.

The room has just hushed as we wait for the chairman, Sir Adrian Fulford, to enter.

Jonny Humphries
Reporting from Liverpool

Speaking in January, Det Ch Insp Jason Pye told the BBC how the families of the girls killed and wounded in the attack had "kept us going" over the course of an upsetting investigation process.

Det Ch Insp Pye said not only had the distressing evidence taken a toll on the police and other professionals involved, but the explosion of disorder and violence that followed saw frontline officers who had responded on the day of the attack deployed to deal with rioters.

"Yes this is our job, we put our hand up to do it," he said.

"We never expect to wake up in the morning and come to something like this, but neither did any of those 26 children or their families or the adults as well."

Acknowledging the toll of the case, Det Ch Insp Pye added: "It is difficult.

"It's difficult for people who constantly see some of the details, and who have had to read through it on a constant basis, not just within policing...

"But it's the families and getting justice that keeps us going day-by-day."

Jonny Humphries
Reporting from Liverpool

Image source, Family photos

Today the Southport Inquiry will take on a very different focus.

So far we have heard harrowing and distressing statements from survivors, their families and the parents of the three girls murdered in the attack last summer - Bebe King, Elsie Dot Stancombe and Alice Aguiar.

Each one described the physical and psychological wounds inflicted in the Hart Space dance studio, and included demands for the inquiry to effect "real change".

Today the inquiry will call Det Ch Insp Jason Pye, who led the investigation for Merseyside Police, as part of an attempt to establish a "definitive timeline" of both the killer's movements that day and how the attack unfolded.

Det Ch Insp Pye’s evidence will also outline what the police investigation uncovered about the items he had in his house, including weapons and other materials, and his use of electronic devices.

Counsel to the inquiry, Nicholas Moss KC, said in his opening statement last week that discussions had taken place to limit distressing details to spare the families of the victims further trauma.

The inquiry is expected to start hearing evidence at about 11:00 BST.